Or
Reparations and You
I know, I know. I almost never post. And when I do it’s either depressing or nerdy or depressingly nerdy. I’ll make a deal with you: Make it through this one and I promise the next one will be hilarious, utterly inappropriate, and result in you losing even more respect for me than you did after reading this one. Deal? Alright.
Also, I know. Your mind is already made up. You’ve had the same opinion on this subject for ‘n’ number of years and fits your world view and your view of yourself quite nicely. Nothing (and you mean nothing) I’m going to say will change your mind. The only thing I’ll change about you is how you see me. Or maybe not even. Yeah. Got it.
Also also, I know that this is reeeeeally long. But, frankly, this should be a dissertation, not a quickly-written down-and-dirty blog post. I’ve almost written this at least three times over the years. But they’re just all waaay too long. Yes, believe it or not, even longer than this. And this one doesn’t even come with a TLDR/Layman’s Summary. Get through it. It was hard to write. It’s probably not nearly as hard to read.
AMA
I posted an Ask Me (almost) Anything on Facebook a bit ago. I got a lot of interesting, well-thought-out questions from really well-intentioned people. One of those was about my thoughts on reparations. Here’s what I said:
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I wrestled with reparations for a long time. I didn’t wrestle with whether it was just. I think anyone not clouded by their own self-interest can see that it’s just. I wrestled with whether it was an achievable pursuit. Whether the kind of toxicity that is typically met when a black person asks for absolutely anything would make it impossible. Whether it was economically feasible as time has passed and the population of the country has risen. Whether poor white people who might also need aid would stop aid to black people and label it unjust. What form it would take. Who would get it. It got very complicated in my mind and I realized after tossing it around for a long time that I was just the wrong person to figure it out.
And then came Ta’Nehisi Coates:
He offered a structure for implementation built around improving education, health, and business development) which I accepted, but can’t locate it just now. It’s difficult to take advantage of people who have money, power, and education.
Here’s the bill which has gone exactly no where, as one would expect:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/40
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Unfair
I don’t think I was being quite fair enough when I wrote that. I don’t think I made a proper argument about reparations. I made some assumptions that might have made it difficult for someone with a different take on reparations to voice any objection. I forgot that people were there to ask questions because they didn’t live in my head, see what I see, hear what I hear, and experience what I experience.
I was trying so hard to be careful in my responses, to make sure that my posts were logical, fair, and clear, yet still concise enough to read in a few minutes on Facebook that I didn’t do proper service to this post.
No one told me. No one ever tells me when I make a mistake. Doors just slam shut. And then I have to figure it out. No, I just figured it out after coincidentally watching Penn and Teller’s Bullshit episode on Reparations. It just happened to be the next one in line.
I agree with about 75% of their points normally. Where I disagree, I can usually attribute it to a lack of personal experience on their part rather than reasoning that leaves their argument short. Such was the case with reparations.
Speaking of which, here is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Reparations article:
Like Penn and Teller, I rely pretty heavily on a good argument, examples, and things you can easily verify on your own. So let’s dig in. Bear with me.
My arguments follow in this series of posts:
3. Why The Hell Should I Care?
Please enjoy. And Happy 4th.
-CG